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 “ The City of Rams.” 51

thousand other drugs, are sold; stores for hats and caps, umbrellas, spectacles, and fans are hurriedly seen, until we reach the banking street, where scores of shops with barricaded doors show shroffs busy over baskets of dollars, tying them up in gunny bags, or handing the doubtful coin to men who. sit in rows, with baskets of silver in syeee or dollars, busily and deftly separating the true from the base.

Beyond this we pass the large stores that deal in birds’ nests, and offer this delicacy in quantities varying in price from fifty cents to several dollars an ounee. The remarkable combination of colour in the signs strikes us forcibly at this point; perpendicular boards, some thirty feet long and a foot wide, with the names of the shops and their business in large letters, green and gold, red and black, yellow, orange, blue, grey, and brown, painted, grained, or lacquered, form a perfect maze and wilderness of colours.

We are on our way to Curio Street, whieh no one fails to visit, where the richest of old porcelain is sometimes seen, sang-du-bauf vases offered at $1,500 each, rhinoceros horns, jade ornaments, and bronzes at fabulous prices. The silk shops form an attractive feature with all their rich display of fabries woven by hand. Street after street is given up to this industry, the bright fabrics in wondrous colours and richness of texture growing slowly in the awkward looms which are manipulated by hands and feet combined. ‘The silk firms are mostly connected with some of the merchant houses, for whom they act both as agents and producers, often being under strict articles of agreement not to manufacture for or sell to any one but